Table of Contents

Installing the latest Rosegarden source from Subversion

These instructions show how to install a development version of Rosegarden to use along with the version installed through your distro. Many of these operations can be performed using graphical utilities, but it is much harder to describe point here click that across many different package managers and desktop environments, so these instructions assume you have some familiarity with the Linux command line. You will want to go into a terminal using xterm, Konsole, GNOME Terminal or the like to enter these commands.

.deb-based Distros (Debian, Ubuntu, Mint and Derivatives)

These instructions were tested with Ubuntu 12.04, but the same general process should work on all .deb-based distros, with some minor variations.

Install Distro Rosegarden

First, install your distro's version of Rosegarden. It will be out of date, but this is a quick and easy way to pull in all the run-time dependencies that Rosegarden needs.

sudo apt-get install rosegarden subversion

Enable Source Repositories

Have a look to make sure you have source packages enabled in /etc/sources.list Lines that start with # are comments. Lines that start with deb are for packages, and lines that start with deb-src are for source packages. If you see lines starting with #deb-src you should remove the # to enable source repositories. You should be left with a number of entries that resemble this short sample:

If you changed sources.list then you'll need to do an update to pull in all the new information:

sudo apt-get update

Install Build Dependencies

Having done that, the next step is to use apt-get buid-dep to install all the build dependencies. These rarely change, and the build dependencies for any version of Rosegarden within the last couple of years should be good enough to get the current development source up and running.

sudo apt-get build-dep rosegarden

Create Build Directory (Folder)

Now you need to decide where you want to build Rosegarden. Michael always creates a ~/SVN directory for this purpose, but you can put it anywhere you have write and execute permissions, and if you intend to use Eclipse there may be special naming considerations. I assume you have no better ideas but to follow my lead, so:

mkdir ~/SVN

Get the Source

With that done you will want to change to your build directory. I assume ~/SVN; please adjust to suit your local situation, and check out the source:

cd ~/SVN

If you have a SourceForge account and think you might want to contribute patches, check out the source using your SourceForge ID:

Bootstrap and Configure

Once you've got the source to rosegarden-svn under the directory of your choice, move into it, and bootstrap the source:

cd rosegarden-svn
sh bootstrap.sh

Now you need to configure the source. Lately, I have been running 64-bit distros, and on recent 64-bit versions of Ubuntu this step is a little more complicated than it used to be. The first thing you should try is this:

./configure

If that fails with some error about Qt libraries, you will need to use:

./configure --with-qtlibdir=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/

If that fails, you probably need to try replacing x86_64-linux-gnu with something else. Look in /usr/lib for clues, as every one of my Linux systems is 64-bit now.

Build and Run

Now that you've gotten the source bootstrapped and configured, the next step is to build and run.

make && ./rosegarden

If all went well, your computer bogged down pretty hard for 10-15 minutes, and then your shiny new development version of Rosegarden started up. You can help us test bug fixes and new features ahead of releases, and we are happy to have the help! (In the future, you can run with ./rosegarden or you can modify an icon on your desktop to run ~/SVN/rosegarden-svn/rosegarden instead of the usual /usr/bin/rosegarden.)

If something went wrong, don't hesitate to send an email to Michael and ask for help. He will be glad to help you along, and will usually reply within three days.

Good luck!

Update

You will need to keep your development source refreshed, and compile it from time to time. If a developer fixes a bug or adds a feature, you will need to update in order to obtain the newest code:

svn update
make && ./rosegarden

Occasionally an update may break things. Let's just cross that bridge when we come to it.

Other Distros

Nothing here yet. I've been using Ubuntu since 2005 or so, and I'm very satisfied with it. Other people can write the instructions for other distros. Sorry.

(Note, due to high amounts of spamming, it is necessary to ask Michael for a wiki account. He will be happy to get one set up for you in a day or two.)